Consensus on road numbering and classification?

I think one of the reasons we are not doing this right is that we are constantly thinking about all the possibilities with or without adhering to the system of National and Provincial roads. At the moment, I am thinking that motorroads are far too complicated to be taken seriously, and if that is the case given that the motorroad sign is being used randomly, the trunk roads should represent limited-access highways or main intercity roads in general, with limited access highways being tagged with “motorroad=yes”.

I hope you do not mind me taking a bit of time to think this through before posting a new draft?

as i understand there are 3 possible directions: leave them as they are, make them my way, or your way

i think its wrong to categorize todays roads according to some numbers assigned 50 years ago or more

a trunk road is a term used in the UK, not such thing exists here
other countries use the trunk road tag to label expressways or motorroads (which by definition are a step below motorways)
in Greece it is unclear which roads fall in the motorroad category, so no reason to tag them as such

we can use the trunk road tag to label high-speed roads inferior to motorways (like Orestiada - Ormenio, Kilkis bypass, Thessaloniki - Chalkidona, Chalastra - Polykastro, Ptolemaida - Amyntaio etc) as it is now

Hello,

I am prepared to agree on ending the 1963 system and use the 1998 system only, but that would leave some structuring issues.

I am thinking that non-motorroad EO routes should remain primary by default, but parallel roads, such as the ΕΟ104, or any stub that “goes nowhere” (sic) like ΕΟ65γ, should be secondary. Unnumbered major roads should also be secondary.

At the moment I am thinking more about the structure of the network. I am still thinking about how to address Larissa and Katerini, where there are bypasses around the centres that should be taken into account, unless the bypass has a unique number.

The end structure could be something like Berlin (https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/52.5063/13.4083). Towns like Larissa and Katerini could looke a bit like Imola in Italy (https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/44.3503/11.7291), where the roads do not go into the centre if there are bypasses that would otherwise be unnumbered. I know that towns are becoming increasingly interested in keeping motor traffic out of city centres, hence why those bypasses existed in the first place.

Abandoned numbers of the 1963 system could be tagged with the key “old_ref”.

There is no doubt that all the refs in Greece should use the Hellenic alphabet and not the Latin alphabet.

I cannot agree on the postcode system as I have found no evidence of them in government documents. Hence we probably have to stay with ΕΠ for now.

I am for keeping the provincial roads secondary because that is the legal classification by the Greek government and not by me.

However, to allay your concerns, we could give greater focus towards using the surface (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface) and smoothness (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:smoothness) tags on Greek roads: I think that we overlooked the possibility of mapping the road condition, and instead we put the blame on the numbering system, causing lots of problems. The two tags related to the road condition are there for a reason, to warn drivers of the road condition.

this is starting to look like the syriza - eu negotiation (the one is proposing things and the other not want to change a thing)

i thought the postal code system would be nice, but since you disagree i ll make them ΕΠ, not secondary though

i tried to identify these provincial roads in Thrace and Macedonia, and it was challenging (unfinished roads, non-existent roads, unpaved tracks, abandoned villages) and were the road was there was narrow with no lines leading to very small villages, so no traffic

about legal classification…i dont remember the government stating anywhere that we should label them as secondary in openstreetmap

i cant express myself properly about road smoothness

what do you guys think about making major highways green (trunk)? i ve been told navigator software works better with motorways trunk and primaries (giving them much more priority than secondary and tertiary)

motorroads are ambiguous anyway and not officially defined
so this is what i m thinking:

trunk: highways connecting cities (Εθνικές Οδοί)
primary: inferior quality highways + οld national highways (Παλαιές Εθνικές Οδοί)
secondary: roads connecting towns + old provincial roads (Επαρχιακές Οδοί)
tertiary: links to villages

Old national highways should be secondary or primary, depending on how busy it is. That idea would free up primary for “other national roads and major avenues” without too many issues.

thats the idea…if a road is in bad condition or serves less traffic should be degraded

new roads with better characteristics, bypassing cities etc should be trunk, also major urban avenues

ΕΠ should be secondary, except for really bad roads (no lines, narrow, unpaved)

tertiary should be any road that serves more traffic than residential

Revised proposal at: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Amaroussi#Greek_road_hierarchy_review

When I feel better I could do a trial at a town like Larissa or West Athens.

in fact former municipalities have become municipal units, so they are the same
level 8: municipal units (δημοτικές ενότητες)
level 9: municipal/local communities (δημοτικές/τοπικές κοινότητες) *former municipal compartments have become local communities
level 10: village/town/city limits

concerning road classification we should label them according to actual usage and quality, not just because they have a number (e.g. Larisa - Karditsa has no number but should be trunk)
the same goes about lower classes (there are a lot of unnumbered roads connecting towns, which they should be tertiary)

also an other thing: highways being replaced should be degraded (even if the new road isnt completed) e.g. Chalkidona - Edessa old road should be primary (only new parts should be trunk) also Evros Vertical Axis

Highways being replaced should only be downgraded when the corresponding project is complete and open. Downgrading them prior to completion is speculative, something that we do not do on OpenStreetMap.

Όπως βλέπω το έχετε πάρει πολύ “ζεστά”, δυστυχώς δεν μπορώ να συμμετάσχω γιατί είμαι πνιγμένος λόγω δουλειάς.
Αν δω κανένα στραβό όμως, θα μιλήσω :slight_smile:

Γιάννης.

ΥΓ. Αυτά τα Καλλικρατικά ονόματα ποτέ δεν τα χώνεψα, γιαυτό όπου δείτε δικές μου διορθώσεις (παλιές) τα έχω όλα όπως τα έμαθα στο σχολείο. Δήμος, Νομός, Περιφέρεια κλπ.

The content under the section “Greek road hierarchy review” is only relevant to this. Please do not worry about the other sections, as they are old drafts.

Another revision to my proposal.

I think the classification situation is something we need to address first: in a majority of countries (according to this), a given type of road or group of numbers are usually tied to one classification for sake of simplicity. I personally cannot think that I cannot improve further on the proposal that I have refined as of now: to assign National and Provincial roads to more than two categories of road each would just make it too complicated for all of us.

i think the topic of this revision is to make things easier for a map user, if we stick to a single category for national highways or provincial roads we fail to deliver this

it would be easy if we agree on some rules

your proposal is ok by me…but i have some thoughts i need to share:
-if a major highway (trunk) enters a city and becomes narrow and serves commercial traffic should be primary
-major provincial roads (connecting more than 2 locations) should be secondary by default (as long as the road is in decent condition)
-minor provincial roads (usually short, connecting villages) should be tertiary (unless unpaved)
-also secondary could be unnumbered provincial roads connecting towns (there are a lot of them)

heres my idea about greek roads
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Greece/A_new_Road_Network_for_Greece#Classification

national road numbers are fictional
but these in fact are the major highways in greece (an idea about which could be trunk)

Hi,

I object to the deletion of the route relations (see http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/31960525): this is not something that I have not come up with on my own, but I do not think the relations should be deleted for routing and documentation reasons. However, if it is necessary, then what other way can we use to keep track of the progress?

Again, it appears you have deleted them without proper consultation. As for the numbers you have put on the wiki, we cannot use something that we just simply made up. The reason we use the 1998 routes is that they exist in law, and the motorways numbers because they are already on the signs.

well i didnt say to use these numbers…this is just how i think it should be (i state its fictional)

i had chats about route relations in the irc channel and everybody told me road relations are redundant (not included in navigation software, unnecessary use of resources)

relations wiki: “The more members are stuffed into a single relation, the harder it is to handle, the easier it breaks, the easier conflicts can show up and the more resources it consumes at database and server”

its ok to use route relations for public transport, hiking routes etc and maybe e-roads

E-road relations are a lot larger and complicated than our National Road relations. If ordering is the issue, then JOSM would help to spot the problems with relations (e.g. duplicated members, direction).

With all due respect, I recommend retaining the relations for documentation purposes: for example, at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Germany/Autobahn, you can see that Germany is okay in with having relations for roads, as long as it is marked clearly for obvious reasons. I do not see anything wrong with keeping the road route relations.

I am actually quite upset that you decided to delete relations without proper agreement (see https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/365499, https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/403135 and https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/394574)). While I understand your concerns, Greece is already beginning to be terribly messed up by the lack of conformation (e.g. what is wrong with showing all provincial roads at the same level, when we can use surface to emphasise on the quality?).

if we agree how to use relations i can make new ones or help fix others (most of them are wrong anyway)

be patient and i ll fix all road types (even provincial) to be consistent to the new scheme

Sorry for the delay in the reply:

If route relations for national and provincial roads are to be phased out, then what alternatives are there to keep track of the tagging of road numbers in Greece, mainly for quality assurance purposes? Overpass Turbo may be one option, but how to I save queries into easy to use and persistent links? Also, there are timeout issues in Overpass, especially for long routes.

At present I have left the route relations due to uncertainty over its future or its replacement.

http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/bpG is a trial of the Overpass system for Attica Provincial Road 8.

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

I am not sure if we need to classify every single avenue as a trunk road? If we go on and classify all roads solely by layout like what is going on in Karditsa, then we are going to end up with a rather messy network in my opinion (in the case of major roads, I prefer “Between cities” rather than “multi-lane dual carriageways with traffic lights or 2 lane highways with grade separated junctions”).

Even if we now drop our dependence on road numbers, there is a need for some “continuity”, especially since we decided not to use trunk just for the motor-roads.